The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II | Page 6

wiser man. I take it that no one in
authority in England would discuss the matter seriously with him, and,
in France, I do not believe he could even get a hearing.
Please let me have your impressions upon this subject.
I wish I could be near you to-day for there are so many things I could
tell that I cannot write.
Your friend, E.M. House.
To Edward M. House
American Embassy, London [Undated].
DEAR HOUSE:
Never mind about Bryan. Send him over here if you wish to get rid of
him. He'll cut no more figure than a tar-baby at a Negro camp-meeting.
If he had come while he was Secretary, I should have jumped off

London Bridge and the country would have had one ambassador less.
But I shall enjoy him now. You see some peace crank from the United
States comes along every week--some crank or some gang of cranks.
There've been two this week. Ever since the Daughters of the Dove of
Peace met at The Hague, the game has become popular in America; and
I haven't yet heard that a single one has been shot--so far. I think that
some of them are likely soon to be hanged, however, because there are
signs that they may come also from Germany. The same crowd that
supplies money to buy labour-leaders and the press and to blow up
factories in the United States keeps a good supply of peace-liars on tap.
It'll be fun to watch Bryan perform and never suspect that anybody is
lying to him or laughing at him; and he'll go home convinced that he's
done the job and he'll let loose doves all over the land till they are as
thick as English sparrows. Not even the President could teach him
anything permanently. He can do no harm on this side the world. It's
only your side that's in any possible danger; and, if I read the signs
right, there's a diminishing danger there.
No, there's never yet come a moment when there was the slightest
chance of peace. Did the Emperor not say last year that peace would
come in October, and again this year in October? Since he said it, how
can it come?
The ambitions and the actions of men, my friend, are determined by
their antecedents, their surroundings, and their opportunities--the great
deeds of men before them whom consciously or unconsciously they
take for models, the codes they are reared by, and the chances that they
think they see. These influences shaped Alexander and Cæsar, and they
shaped you and me. Now every monarch on the Continent has behind
him the Napoleonic example. "Can I do that?" crosses the mind of
every one. Of course every one thinks of himself as doing it
beneficently--for the good of the world. Napoleon, himself, persuaded
himself of his benevolent intentions, and the devil of it was he
persuaded other people also. Now the only monarch in Europe in our
time who thought he had a chance is your friend in Berlin. When he
told you last year (1914) that of course he didn't want war, but that he
was "ready," that's what he meant. A similar ambition, of course, comes

into the mind of every professional soldier of the continent who rises to
eminence. In Berlin you have both--the absolute monarch and the
military class of ambitious soldiers and their fighting machine. Behind
these men walks the Napoleonic ambition all the time, just as in the
United States we lie down every night in George Washington's
feather-bed of no entangling alliances.
Then remember, too, that the German monarchy is a cross between the
Napoleonic ambition and its inheritance from Frederick the Great and
Bismarck. I suppose the three damnedest liars that were ever born are
these three--old Frederick, Napoleon, and Bismarck--not, I take it,
because they naturally loved lying, but because the game they played
constantly called for lying. There was no other way to play it: they had
to fool people all the time. You have abundant leisure--do this: Read
the whole career of Napoleon and write down the startling and exact
parallels that you will find there to what is happening to-day. The
French were united and patriotic, just as the Germans now are. When
they invaded other people's territory, they said they were attacked and
that the other people had brought on war. They had their lying
diplomats, their corruption funds; they levied money on cities and
states; they took booty; and they were God's elect. It's a wonderful
parallel--not strangely, because the game is the same and the moral
methods are the same. Only the tools are somewhat different--the
submarine, for example. Hence the Lusitania disaster (not disavowed,
you will observe), the Arabic disaster, the propaganda, underground
and above, in